Mysteries Resolved:  A Second Skin Outtake
by alexajaye
Summary: Just a little snippet about how I envisioned Norm telling Lisa the news about how Amelia and Warren.  This is definitely a companion piece. If you haven't read Second Skin, you'll be lost here if you don't.  Rated T. Original Character. Enjoy!


**This is just a little (literally) snippet about how Norm told Lisa about the fact that Amelia and Warren were still alive and being kept in stasis in the lab. I thought this up almost as soon as I wrote the scene with her and him and Jake all the way back in Chapter 28. So if you haven't read that chapter up until now with Chapter 29, you'll be lost.**

**I also wanted to show a little of the relationship that appears to be developing between Norm and Lisa. I haven't been getting very many varying opinions about anyone except Jake and Ava, and while they're the main characters of the story this little thing here is a companion to, there are a lot of other characters who will have greater significance later on - if that gives anyone reading a hint.**

**So, please, read on! Tell me what you think.  
**

* * *

_**Mysteries Resolved**_

Norm had never been more uncomfortable in his entire life as he sat in the living room of the quarters Lisa Masen had been afforded after all the other humans had been forced off the surface of Pandora nearly eleven years earlier. He hadn't been this nervous when they'd gone out into the forest looking for his avatar or when they'd needlessly attempted to resuscitate it despite the three large bullet holes in its chest and shoulder. He hadn't even been this nervous the first time they'd decided to take the first avatar out of operation. But for some reason, sitting in Lisa's quarters now made him the most nervous he'd ever been, and it was hard to hide it when she saw him after coming out of her bedroom in a jumpsuit with her hair wet and a towel over her shoulder.

"Are you okay?" she asked softly, moving to the mini-kitchen and retrieving a pitcher of tea from her cold storage.

"I'm fine, I guess," he nodded. "Like I said, I just really needed to talk to you, and even with Jake still on the base, it's important for you to know this. If anything, so you'll be able to help when we need it."

"Why would you and Max need my help?" she asked, moving into the living room and sitting across from him as he sat on her coffee table. "I'm a plant specialist. And I'm still cataloguing samples from the last supply run."

"Well, we have all those medicine supplies from the village for you to test for the avatars, and Max will want to make sure we can use them."

She looked at him curiously, and he thought she probably didn't believe him, but he remembered what he was there for, and he sat up straight, clearing his throat softly.

"Listen," he said. "About earlier, with Jake, I hope I didn't worry you about anything. He's just still a little protective of all of us, and it's hard to dissuade him from worrying. And I need you to know this. Because we really do need you to help us."

"It sounds serious," she agreed.

"It is. It's more serious than anything we've told you before, and I want you to know this since you and me, we're the only ones on the base who can breathe outside — at least until I can convince Max otherwise. So I'm just going to say it, and I have to ask you not to interrupt until I'm finished. All right?"

She tilted her head, grinning and then pulling her towel from her shoulder. "All right, Science Guy. Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure I can handle it."

Norm inhaled deeply. "God, I hope so. Okay, so you know the new part of the lab where we're keeping the avatars?" he asked.

"I'm in there every day, Norm," she informed him. "I'm familiar with the area."

He exhaled sharply. "Right. Of course. So, anyway, I know we've got all the avatars in stasis, and I know you know that. But what you probably don't know is that there are three extra stasis chambers that we've been monitoring since before the base was cleared out. And what else you probably don't know is that fact that until a couple of months ago, I didn't know about them either. Max has known about them the whole time, along with Helen, Mitch and David."

The grin on her face faded slightly. "And why do they know about this while the rest of us didn't? Why didn't they tell us after everyone else was gone?"

"Honestly? I think Max had other important things to focus on, and while in stasis, most specimens are safe from the decaying process, so he just left it the way it was. Trust me, I was not happy when he told me about this, and I made sure he knew it. And he didn't really want me to tell you this yet, but with the shuttle coming, we really need your opinion and your expertise."

Lisa shook her head. "I'm confused," she exhaled. "Who do these chambers belong to exactly? Whoever it was would've been on the base before the war. Why were they put into stasis?"

"Max told me they were injured the night Grace died," Norm explained. "He said they didn't have the supplies to keep them alive without putting them into stasis, and he was hoping to have the supplies eventually."

"Injured?" she repeated. "Injured how?"

"Gunshot wounds," he nodded, watching the confused look on her face change quickly to knowledge and memory.

"Oh, God," she whispered. "No."

Norm leaned closer to her. "You know, don't you?"

It took her several seconds to regain her composure. "They were working in the ambient room that night. All night, but I didn't know who they were working on. And I never knew what happened to them." She leaned closer, lowering her voice. "Are you honestly saying that whoever they were working on that night survived enough for them to be put into stasis for the last ten years? How is that possible?"

"Max said it was the only way he knew of to keep from losing them," Norm acknowledged. "And you know how stasis works on the plants. They don't mature. They never make it passed the seedling stage until we take them out of their pods to resupply the greenhouse. And we have samples in there from before every else left. And it would work the same way on human flesh. It would completely suspend all cellular activity, along with injury progression."

It took Lisa maybe another minute to understand why Norm was telling her this, and she lowered her eyes slowly.

"You're thinking of taking these people out of stasis, aren't you?" she asked. "You and Max. Because of something we got in the medicine supplies from the village. Am I right?"

"It's what we're hoping," he nodded. "But there's more. And you need to know this most of all. Because you're more familiar with these people than anyone left on the base, and having you there when they wake up — if they wake up — will actually benefit them."

"Who are they?"

Norm leaned in closer, reaching for her hands and surprising her with the contact even though she didn't make him let go. "Lisa," he said. "It's Amelia and Warren."

The knowledge in her eyes was unmistakable, and it slowly turned into disgust as she pushed him away and stood up from the couch. "You have no right to even speak their names," she spat glaring at him as he followed her. "It's your fault they're gone. It's Jake's fault too."

He stopped her retreat, taking her arms in his hands. "They're not gone," he insisted. "They didn't die, Lisa. They were injured, and Max found them outside. He got them into surgery before they died. But he couldn't save them — not with the supplies he had with him that night."

"You're lying!" she yelled in his face, attempting to get away and failing as he tightened his grip on her. "They were shot trying to get Ava off the base because the two of you had the nerve to escape from detention."

"No, they weren't trying to get Ava off the base," he shouted. "Grace didn't really die that night, Lisa. She passed through the Eye, and she's a part of this place now. Ava felt the connection that night, and Amelia was outside with her when one of the guards caught them. I've seen the security footage. At first, I thought that too. That they were trying to get Ava off the base. But it was the other way around completely. They were trying to protect Ava, and Warren fought two security guards that night before he got shot himself. Lisa, I'm not lying. I've seen them. I've seen Amelia and Warren. They're not dead. And Max and me, we need your help."

"How long have you known about this?" she demanded, angry tears brimming in her eyes slowly.

"Max only told me a couple of months ago," he promised. "I'm not sure why, but when he realized how long it would be before the shuttle got here, I guess he decided it was time for me to know. I wanted to tell you. I swear. Because I'd seen Amelia's video logs, and I knew how important you were to her. But Max made me swear I wouldn't tell you until he was sure he could unlock the stasis pods they were inside without interrupting their hibernation period. And now he thinks he can do it on one of them to see if it will work."

"So he's willing to risk killing one of them to see if he can get both of them out of there alive?" she shrieked.

"It's not like that, I promise," he said gently. "If it looks like it's not working, we'll have everything ready to put which ever one we choose back under until we can get it right. But the shuttle's only three years away. We can't afford Amelia and Warren being in stasis when they get here. We just can't. It's too risky, and it's getting to where we might have to do it anyway and chance losing them both. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. If I'd known you were injecting yourself a long time ago, maybe Max could've told us together. But I can't change that. And now we really need you, Lisa. Please."

She pressed her lips together tightly, grasping onto him as he held her there, and for several minutes, Norm was sure she was going to throw him out. He was sure he'd gone too far and she would never forgive him. But then she closed her eyes and loosened her grip on him, prompting him to do the same. Norm unconsciously grinned, only to have her slap him hard across his face and almost knock him over.

"If you ever keep anything like this a secret from me," she warned, "I promise that blow will be a lot lower."

He lifted his hand to his face, grimacing softly as his cheek stung from being slapped for pretty much the first time in his life. "Yes, ma'am," he agreed.

"Does Max know you're telling me this?" she asked calmly, apparently having gotten most of her hostility out by slapping him.

"He does," he confirmed.

"Then take me to them," she commanded.

While still cradling his face, Norm turned to her door to lead the way out of her room.

The walk from Lisa's room back to the lab was a little nerve-wracking for Norm, especially as he still regained feeling in the left side of his face. He kept going over how Max had told him about all of this, and never once had he felt the need to hit Max or yell at him or even get irate with him. But Norm actually kind of understood. Lisa had known Warren and Amelia the longest, and they were like her family. He knew it wasn't right that something like this had been kept from her for so long, but now she was finding out, and he could only hope he was doing the right thing by showing all of this to her. He figured it would take her a little while away from Jake to be able to keep it to herself the way he had to whenever he saw Jake.

"We've been monitoring them a lot more closely the last couple of months," Norm said to Lisa as they walked closer to the lab. "We run regular diagnostics on their pods every day, and we've been steadily increasing the amount of moisture in their pods to get them ready to come out. We're hoping to have at least one of them out by the end of the year."

"Is it looking good?" she asked softly. "With their injuries and everything."

"Well, they both lost a lot of blood which Max and Helen tried to transfuse that night. He told me they used some avatar blood on Amelia, and it helped stabilize her, but he couldn't figure out why. Other than her pregnancy, it doesn't make any sense."

Lisa moved to his side and stopped him. "Pregnancy?" she repeated. "That's not possible. Amy couldn't conceive after she had Ava. There was too much damage to her uterus to support another child."

"I know that's what all the evidence showed in the specs," he assured her. "But Max is nearly a hundred percent positive. They ran tests that night before putting Amelia and Warren in the pods. I think one of the reasons he really wanted to put them in stasis was so Amelia wouldn't have a miscarriage from being shot. We're trying to prevent that too, in addition to a lot of other things. Max can explain a lot better than I can. Come on."

It was quiet the rest of the way, and when Norm stepped into the lab with Lisa, Max was there with Helen and Mitch. The trio of scientists ended their conversation abruptly, and Norm spoke up.

"I told her," he said softly. "And we need her to help us. So we need to tell her everything that's been going on. She can test our new samples to make sure they work."

Helen stepped forward first, moving to Lisa's side and speaking gently. "Are you sure you want to do this?" she asked. "I know you like being around Ava again after all this time. If you do this, you won't be able to see her tomorrow, and probably not even when she comes back with Jake. You'll need to isolate yourself from them until you can trust yourself not to tell them before they're ready."

"And you know they're not ready now?" she asked, and Helen glanced back at Max.

"We know they're not ready," Max said moving forward. "I know Jake couldn't handle this now even if he'd try to pretend that he could. I watched him go from one extreme after he lost Neytiri to the other when he found Ava in the forest. He never really had time to grieve. It's better if he doesn't know this until after he and Ava have settled in together."

"And how long do you think that's going to be?" Lisa asked, looking at Norm and almost begging him to explain everything to her. "Jake was with Neytiri for ten years. Surely you can't mean to keep this from him and Ava for that long."

"Of course we won't," Norm promised. "Just until we can get one of them out of stasis. Another month or two."

Lisa inhaled deeply, glancing around the room. "Can I see them?" she asked, pleading.

Norm stepped in, taking the code key from Max. "I'll take you," he said, directing her away from them to an older part of the newest part of the lab that still looked like what the base had looked like almost eleven years earlier.

Since the base had been evacuated, this part of the lab had changed the most, growing around the pods and expanding to include massive stasis pods for the avatars and smaller maturation chambers for the seedlings meant to go in the greenhouse. Norm guided Lisa into this part of the lab silently, situating her in front of a column of equipment that didn't look like it could hold what it obviously did. The outside of the column was first opaque and reflected the room to obscure the view inside, but when Norm slid the code key along the lock on the wall, the glass turned clear, allowing Lisa to see all three pods as they stood stacked one on top of the other.

The bottom pod was occupied by Warren's avatar as he slept with various leads and monitoring sensors over his chest and forehead to monitor bodily functions and brain activity that actually only showed lower brain functions to control his heart, lungs and circulatory systems that kept him alive. His ears twitched slightly the moment she saw him, and she looked up at Norm as he knelt down beside her.

"He still moves," he explained. "Because of the gravitational fields around the surface of the moon we're on. But he hasn't aged or grown since we put him in here."

Norm pulled up a stool, allowing Lisa to sit on it she peered into the next chamber where Warren was laying bare-chested with a massive monitor covering the right side of his chest. He looked exactly the way he had that day, and Lisa couldn't believe so much time had passed. The two days worth of stubble that had been on his face that morning was still there, and even though he was in stasis, his skin looked as pink as ever.

"Are his heart rate and respiration still normal?" she asked him. "Or have they started to fall off recently?"

"They're better than normal," Norm nodded. "Like I said, we've been running diagnostics on them every day to keep them both up. We're just hoping to get one of them out before the end of the year."

Finally, Lisa stood up to face the inside of Amelia's pod as she laid under a sterile covering. Her skin should've been pink, but through the glass, Lisa could see a harsh blue tint to her cheeks as she breathed in deeply. Lisa hadn't seen her since the day before Grace had died, and she'd almost forgotten how beautiful Amelia was. She remembered everything that had happened that day, and she wished she had known they were here even if there wasn't really anything she could've done for them at the time.

"Where was she shot?" she asked Norm.

He inhaled deeply, leaning over the pod. "Her, uh, upper abdomen. The bullet that hit her punctured her large intestine and almost severed an artery. Max found the fetus while he was doing an ultrasound to find the damage to her artery, and we're hoping to preserve as much of her health as we can. But we found out a few days ago it's going to be very difficult to save Amelia from the pregnancy. But not impossible."

Norm watched tears well in her eyes, and even though he wanted to comfort her and tell her they would do everything they could, he stayed back, allowing her to process as much of it as she could. After a minute or two, she turned her head in his direction even though she didn't look at him.

"You told me this for a reason," she said. "Why are you telling me?"

He stepped closer, lowering his voice despite the fact they were alone. "We really need your help with the new samples," he told her. "We need to know which ones we can use when we start getting ready to pull one of them out of stasis. Max said he was able to stabilize them, but he couldn't repair all their wounds. There's still a lot we don't know about Pandoran plant life _and_ Na'vi medicine, and we need you to look at each one to figure out how they'll be able to help us. And I didn't say anything to Jake at the time, but he kind of gave me an idea about the avatars that we've considered before but not up until now when we really need at least one to be up and operational."

She looked at him then, turning to face him completely. "What kind of idea did he give you?" she asked.

Norm kind of grinned. "How would you feel about being able to link with your avatar again?" he inquired, then added. "On a limited basis, at first, of course."

Lisa just stared at him.

* * *

**I'm working on the next chapter right now, and even though I can't say when it'll be ready, I am working on it so it'll be a good one.**

**Until that time, Keep Calm & Carry On! I love you all for reading!  
**


End file.
